4 ms·

Exactly, when it comes to reality not everybody gets a trophy. Critical thinking and science are waaaay undervalued in our culture.

• 551199 10y ago
  Reality is lot of the science is wrong as well. Intentionally paid by special interest or the end result is defined before any science is done. You don't want to look science religiously either.
  • cwisecarver 10y ago
    IIRC one of the main tenants of science, when I was learning it in middle school in the early '90s, was that it's fact until it's disproven. We don't know everything about it which is what makes it different than religion. There's no faith involved. I know a lot of it is corrupt and aiming for a target but good scientists will tell you that they're basing their findings on studies which may have flaws and they'd want you to try and reproduce their studies to tell them if they've gotten something wrong.
    • 551199 10y ago
      Sure but what if it was never a fact. 'Fat makes you fat' or similar falsification that have real impact to society[0] We shouldn't attribute everything to malice, but there are clear issues in science: 'Too many of the findings that fill the academic either are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly important papers. A leading computer scientist frets that three-quarters of papers in his subfield are bunk. In 2000-10 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties. Careerism also encourages exaggeration and the cherry-picking of results. In order to safeguard their exclusivity, the leading journals impose high rejection rates: in excess of 90% of submitted manuscripts. The most striking findings have the greatest chance of making it onto the page. Conversely, failures to prove a hypothesis are rarely even offered for publication, let alone accepted. “Negative results” now account for only 14% of published papers, down from 30% in 1990. Yet knowing what is false is as important to science as knowing what is true. The failure to report failures means that researchers waste money and effort exploring blind alleys already investigated by other scientists.'[1] [0] https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193/ https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/08129... [1] http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-re... [2] Alan Sokal - Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Hoax-Science-Philosophy-Culture/dp/0199561834/ https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Hoax-Science-Philosophy-Cultur... [3] How to Lie with Statistics - https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728/ https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/03... [4] Nassim Taleb 'Incerto', twitter.com/nntaleb
      • splawn 10y ago
        Despite all of your examples, science is still the best way we have for understanding the universe. If you have a better way then by all means enlighten us.
        • Chris2048 10y ago
          OP posts about the current state of science, A better way of doing science is needed.
          • 551199 10y ago
            Exactly, we could do some much better. Religious attitude is really hurting science.
            • splawn 10y ago
              Sure, there will always be room for improvement. However, I disagree with your latter point, putting ignorant, anti-science, religious, magical thinking people into power is really hurting science. Unlike religion, philosophically, Science is always open for improvement. Edit: I had a comma party.
              • 551199 10y ago
                Repeat of study should be the bare minimum. We are in a situation where lot of underlining assumptions are false. It's hard for common people to experiment science but lets examine something that everybody can experiment daily. Nutritional science. It turns out most of the findings are complete bs or paid by special interests. Probably its not as bad elsewhere but faces similar issues presented in The Economist article.
    • pizza 10y ago
      This is what falsifiability is all about in science. Mathematics relies upon proofs, but there is no such thing as a scientific proof.. You can find sufficient conditions for a phenomenon and have a wholly water-tight argument as to why it occurs, but you can't use use observation to find necessary condition. This is because observations are evidence, and if a future observation shows problems with your theory, you should not discard your evidence (unless of course your secondary theory is that your evidence exhibits a model for some reason why it doesn't explain what it seems to explain on the surface, e.g. experimental error), yada yada..
      • Chris2048 10y ago
        I'm not sure this is True, as you can use probabilistic arguments.
        • pizza 10y ago
          Probabilistic models are what I was referring to; all probabilistic models should produce a prediction, and also a measure of confidence. That measure of confidence can never be 100%. Similarly, you can never have an incontrovertible belief that is not a mathematically/logically-constructed fact 'outside' of the messy real world in some abstract chamber walled off from anything that is like a real life observation, no matter how certain. Basically, you can't have P(A) = 0 or 1 as your prior probability, because then you break Bayes' rule in the sense that new evidence is meaningless - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwell%27s_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwell%27s_rule